It’s amazing when you think about how Internet technology has grown in the last 10 years. Even with all these changes, a few basic principles remain vital: Pages need to load fast, and content is king. The best Web page in the world is worthless if no one sees it. Search engines are still the primary tools to find information, products or services. You must help potential customers find your Web site. Yet, it’s common for newer more advanced Web sites to have optimization issues. Companies usually ignore them – at their own peril. Why is it so important to
be proactive?

The most important aspect of SEO starts on the Web page. Before any onsite SEO is considered, an important fact that must to be acknowledged is that SEO is about individual Web pages as well as the entire Web site. Search engines see every page separately. Design development and content creation are vital elements to assist Web sites in attracting high rankings within search engine spiders.

Often when we evaluate a client’s Web site, we find it wasn’t developed with search engine optimization in mind. As a result, search engine spiders are unable to access, or completely understand, the content topics.

Many clients do not understand the ins and outs of the ever-changing SEO space and the lack of specific optimization related knowledge leads to rather limited SEO visibility for their company. Some Web sites are much worse than others and can actually harm a business, and, even more importantly, the brand perception. Search Engine Journal www.searchenginejournal.com highlighted the BMW Germany Web site as an example of bad SEO techniques.

“Think the big guys are immune to the effects of bad SEO? Think again! In 2006 Google infamously kicked the German BMW site (bmw.de) out of their index after they were caught using doorway pages. Tsk, tsk! This incident made international headlines, and BMW was quick to remove the offending pages, which were apparently live for a whole two years before being caught.

“So what happened to bmw.de when they were served with the 'Google Death Penalty'? Their page rank tanked to an abysmal zero, and they no longer ranked at the top of the SERPS for their most important keywords. Ouch!”

You have a problem. And your problem is your company isn’t ranking on the front page of Google, Yahoo or Bing for your search terms. Potential customers will not usually search past the first two pages, and rarely past page one. So, if your company is buried within the thousands of pages you will not be found.

You’ve already designed your Web site and now that it’s live, you’re thinking SEO is crucial to your success. You’re right! But an SEO-knowledgeable agency will have to break the news that your pretty flash-driven Web site is not optimized properly to gain strong SEO visibility. You’ll have to spend more money to fix the site. Sites built entirely in Flash, or with a lot of video, will not convert traffic. That’s the bad news.

Now for the good news. Preventing, or dealing with these issues, can be the edge you need to out pace your competition online. A company will tell us they want to see their Web site come up in the top three links with a particular search term or phrase. We explain this strategy alone does not produce results overnight. It may take up to six months to monitor and assess all results. The process of continually monitoring, building out-bound/in-bound links, and submitting articles is continuous. The homework doesn’t stop there. To succeed you must monitor your competition. This analysis gives insight to what’s producing results within your market sector. It outlines key opportunities that could put you above your competition – in ranking and in sales. Sound like a lot? That’s where we come in.

BRAND will participate in your Web site content development and design structure to ensure long-term success. Looking for an SEO-knowledgeable agency that will be honest with you is key.

See our next BRAND blog for more information about SEO organic placement vs. pay per click.

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